


A Knight's Burden

by TeamTired



Series: The 120 Pairing Challenge [7]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-09 13:23:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamTired/pseuds/TeamTired
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and Kanaya are out for revenge on Gamzee for killing Equius and Nepeta. Though Karkat knows it could get him killed, he continues to care for and provide for Gamzee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Knight's Burden

Karkat leans back in his chair and carefully looks around the room, making sure everyone has really left this time. Assured the coast is clear, gets up and walks over to one of the walls in the shared computer room and pops open a treasure chest, revealing nothing. A probing of the chest reveals a false bottom, just as he left it. Karkat recovers what he had stashed there earlier that morning after a clandestine trip to the alchemiters: a bottle of Faygo, a tin of face paint, and some packaged food, not a lot, but enough to keep a certain troll pacified and alive. He stows it into his Sylladex and closes the chest after resetting the false bottom. He does another check around the room before walking to the opposite wall, which holds a ventilation grate. Before he can open it, he hears the Transportalizer at the center of the room fizzle alive, and a moment later, Rose is standing there, staring at him.

She raises her eyebrows at the sight of Karkat, as if his presence is an unwelcome surprise. “Ah, there are you are Karkat, we’ve been looking for you…” she says, in a tone Karkat knows is deceptively sweet. “Kayana has informed me that someone has been using our rather limited grist supply without filling out the alchemiter’s logbook, would you know anything about that?”

Karkat does his best not to betray his secret. “NO LALONDE, WHY DON’T YOU ASK YOUR FUCKING INSUFFERABLE ASSHOLE OF A BROTHER? HOW DO YOU KNOW HE WASN’T MAKING SOMETHING SHITTY AND STUPID WITH IT? OR WHY DON’T YOU GO INTERROGATE THAT IDIOT CARAPACE HIM AND TEREZI KEEP HANGING OUT WITH? I’M SURE HE’S BEEN USING IT TO MAKE SOME STUPID CANS FOR THEIR FUCKING WRIGGLER TOWN.”

Rose can hear the acid in his voice and elegantly slides into a passive aggressive tone that almost hurts it’s so sweet. “But Karkat, our lovely mayor would never betray procedure, and I trust my scamp of a brother to obey the rules when we’re experiencing such an ever so awful grist shortage.“ In a flash, she shifts her tone. “I’m just trying to make sure that nobody is violating the rules with the intention of helping a known dangerous murderer, especially not in a way that would endanger all of us by limiting our food supplies.”

Karkat holds his ground. He can feel her Seer powers digging into the space around him, trying to probe his intentions. But his own powers flare up, and he feels his blood burn as it rises up to protect him. He can’t help but smile as he sees the defeated look on Lalonde’s face, a resigned defeat, for now. 

“Very well Karkat, you know of course that Terezi will never convict you without proof. I certainly hope for your sake we do don’t find any.”

Rose stepped back into the transportalizer, fading from view.

Karkat wastes no time in dashing to the grate in the wall, unscrewing it, and crawling into the tunnels. Five or so minutes later, after countless right and left turns through the maze of the ventilation shafts of the meteor, Karkat arrives at a rather large intersection, with a ceiling tall enough to stand up in. 

After a series of knocks on the floor, he lifts up a secret panel in the floor, revealing a makeshift den dug out of the concrete floor of the meteor. 

There, nestled in a pile of trash, broken plushes, and food wrapers, rests Karkat’s moirail. 

Gamzee looks worse than usual. His unadorned face still displays the scratches from Nepeta, which have far from healed correctly. He looks frail and sick, with his long bones jutting out from his skin, betraying his extreme unhealthiness. His hair is unstyled and knotted, even messier and dirtier than usual. 

Karkat knows better than to wake up a sleeping troll, so he ejects the supplies he’s brought Gamzee in a corner of the small nest, and walks over to the pile, sitting down next to Gamzee. A quick check reveals that Gamzee is still alive, but his breathing is shallow and sickly. 

Karkat is tired and worried, and he knows he cannot stay long, which only worsens his mood. His moirail is in a terrible condition, and he feels guilty. 

He lets himself place his palm on Gamzee’s chest, and feels the purple blood that courses through his veins. Karkat can feel his moirail’s lifeforce, fighting against all odds. 

He can’t help but smile. He’s proud of his morail for lasting this long, for staying happy and optimistic even in the face of such persecution. 

Karkat moves his palm to Gamzee’s hair, and uses his claws to brush it, unknotting the hair just a little bit. As he tugs on Gamzee’s scalp, he can hear Gamzee sleeptalk.

“motherfucking love you best friend”

Karkat can’t be sure if Gamzee is really talking to him, and he can’t risk speaking to an awake Gamzee. Hunger, sobriety, and enclosed spaces have taken a larger toll on Gamzee’s sanity than Karkat had thought was possible.

The bruises from the last time Karkat had visited Gamzee when Gamzee was awake still hurt, and too many of those would give away that he was still visiting Gamzee, that he was still placing himself in danger at the hands of a killer. 

But Karkat knows better than that. He knows that there is something left in Gamzee, something worth saving. 

“I’LL ALWAYS TAKE CARE OF YOU GAMZEE, FOR AS LONG AS I CAN.”

He hugs the sleeping frame of Gamzee, and winces when he feels Gamzee’s jutting bones press against him. 

Karkat stays for as long as he can, pressed against Gamzee, seemingly willing Gamzee to health and sanity. 

But there’s only so much a moirail can do. 

As Karkat climbs out of the hole, he takes one last look at Gamzee, who is still lying in his pile, peacefully asleep, a smile on his face. 

Though he knows Gamzee can’t hear him, it doesn’t stop Karkat from saying something as he replaces the covering on the nest. 

“I PITY...”

Karkat stops himself. It’s more than pity, isn't it? It was something else, something primal. Something remarkably untroll, present only in mutated wrigglers and brainless addicts. 

“I LOVE YOU TOO.”


End file.
